UNLV faculty member Shawn Gerstenberger recently received the university’s most prestigious research honor, the Harry Reid Silver State Research Award, which was created in 2001 as a tribute to the U.S. senator for his support of UNLV. The award, which recognizes research that is both highly regarded and responsive to the needs of the community and state, provides recipients with a $10,000 stipend funded with private donations from the UNLV Foundation.

Shawn Gerstenberger

Professor of Community Health Sciences

Shawn Gerstenberger’s path to the laboratory started in an unlikely place: the wilds of Wisconsin.

“Growing up, I always enjoyed fishing, hunting, and the outdoors,” he says. “When I discovered in college that I could conduct research out there, I knew what direction my career would take.”

Since then, Gerstenberger has transformed his love for the outdoors into a highly successful research career by focusing on the effects of various contaminants, specifically mercury, lead, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), on environmental and children’s health.

But he hasn’t stopped there; he has also envisioned and implemented a number of community outreach projects designed to eliminate or diminish the effects of these contaminants. In partnership with various agencies, he has helped improve the health of thousands of children and under-served individuals throughout Nevada.

His exceptional ability to translate his research into programs with impact recently netted Gerstenberger the 2012 Harry Reid Silver State Research Award.

“I’m flattered to receive this award,” he says with a smile. “But it really belongs to my team. I work with such great people; it’s really a case of everyone making me look good.”

Gerstenberger’s curriculum vita belies his modesty. He is credited with acquiring more than $10 million in extramural funding over the course of his career. He has authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and has served as thesis advisor for 65 graduate students.

And, if his research and community programs were not enough, Gerstenberger was also instrumental in the creation of the UNLV School of Public Health (recently renamed the School of Community Health Sciences) and the department of environmental and occupational health, of which he is chair. He was also integral to the formation of the first Ph.D. program (in public health) to be offered jointly by UNR and UNLV.

“Shawn has combined his research interests with a passion for translating his research into meaningful quality of life improvements for people in his community,” says Mary Guinan, the director of UNLV’s School of Community Health Sciences. “He exemplifies the kind of scientist for which this award was developed.”

While appreciative of the award, Gerstenberger doesn’t have the luxury of considering any accolade for long. He’s too busy juggling activities associated with managing grants, community partnerships, and graduate students to stop and think about it.

His latest project is the Nevada Healthy Homes Partnership, a statewide effort to identify the home as a critical determinant of health, for which he recently received a $1.7 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It started with research examining lead in homes; we tested hundreds of private residences, and all daycare facilities in Las Vegas built prior to 1978,” he says. “We were trying to identify the presence of lead in paint, soil, and water and to assist the owners/managers with action plans to address these issues.

“As a follow up to this work, we recently acquired a ‘healthy homes’ grant that will allow us to address multiple home hazards while we are searching for lead-based paint. We’ve submitted four substantial grants to support this more recent effort.”

The purpose of these grants, he says, is to develop strong community partnerships that connect health experts and housing professionals in order to leverage resources from the local community. They then work together to address pressing health issues that stem from peoples’ homes, from asthma triggered by contaminants to trip-and-fall hazards.

Through the project, Gerstenberger and his team have established a National Healthy Homes Training Center at UNLV and have trained more than 100 community partners from over 35 different health and housing agencies.

“My biggest goal right now is to find the funding necessary to make this healthy homes initiative permanent,” he says. “We have to find a way to integrate the activities into an agency or find a source of sustainable funding.”

No one underestimates his chances of succeeding, given his record with follow-through; he has a long history of working with agencies and other organizations to implement practical, long term change.

For example, in partnership with the Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD), he created a program that provides routine lead screening in children under the age of 6, distributes ethnically and culturally appropriate education and outreach designed to help prevent lead poisoning, completes testing for lead-based paint in homes, and conducts regular surveillance of poisoned children and contaminated homes and worksites.

“Before this screening program existed, there were less than 10 children a year screened for lead poisoning in Nevada,” he says. “Last year over 20,000 children were screened through this program.”

When he and his team identified the presence of lead in candies imported from Mexico, they acquired a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a national candy database and registry to identify the problem products. They also worked with the health district to remove tainted candies from some 2,000 local stores and to require major candy manufacturers and distributors to improve their testing and sampling protocols.

“The actions taken by the SNHD have been monumental, as this is the first location in the U.S. to institute a complete ban on the sale of imported candy containing lead, and it has set the standard that many other states are likely to follow,” he notes.

Also based on his research, the Nevada Division of Wildlife Board has banned the use of lead shot in all state wildlife areas.

“We conducted lead research in collaboration with our local wildlife managers and identified elevated concentration of lead in migratory waterfowl and soils in Nevada’s Wildlife Management Areas,” he says.

His work on mercury and PCB’s in the environment has also influenced Native American fishing and regulatory practices in Nevada, and his research on the concentration of mercury in canned tuna has impacted practices in the commercial fishing and tuna fish food preparation industry.

He and his team are also examining mercury concentrations in wildlife from Lake Mead, including fish, migratory waterfowl, bullfrogs, and, most recently, the invasive quagga mussel.

“Research has always been, for me, the perfect way to connect my vocation to relevant issues and activities I’m extremely passionate about,” he says, noting that his love of the outdoors still drives much of his research.

But he is quick to note that of all his research accomplishments, he is most gratified by his interactions with students.

“I have an army of graduate students working on these projects with me, and mentoring them is the best part of my job,” he says. “Two of my doctoral students have been awarded the UNLV Outstanding Dissertation Award for their exceptional work, and I’ve authored peer-reviewed publications with 30 different students who actively participated in the experimental design, data collection and analysis, and write up of scholarly works. They know research from top to bottom, and I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

He says most of his time now is devoted to mentoring his students, guiding the research, and keeping the dollars flowing to the myriad projects that can help enhance quality of life in his community and beyond.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m spinning plates on sticks,” he says with a smile. “But it’s all good.”